Free software is simply software that respects our freedom — our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using. Free software is designed to free the user from restrictions put in place by proprietary software, and so using free software lets you join a global community of people who are making the political and ethical assertion of our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Developing supercomputers that rank among the world's fastest
and most powerful has become a priority of the Chinese government, and
China is the home of the Tianhe 1-A, the world's second fastest
supercomputer. National Supercomputer Center director Liu Guangming
expects supercomputers to become critical contributors to Chinese
economic and scientific development. "The key is that this
supercomputer can fulfill our needs, including mineral exploration,
bioengineering, patents, pharmaceuticals, and gene sequencing," he
notes. However, critics contend that much of the compatible software
can only use the Tianhe 1-A's central processing units and not the
machine's graphics processing units. "Most of the people who use the
national supercomputer are animation and games people," says Cao Jianwen
with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Liu counters this notion, noting
for instance that the Tianhe 1-A has played an important role in
China's energy development. Still, the United States is far ahead of
China in terms of software development, but China aims to ramp up its
supercomputing innovation by building related facilities and all-Chinese
chips.View Full Article